Emily Griffin

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Emily Griffin! I grew up in a suburb of Houston, Texas and relocated to Brooklyn about 2.5 years ago. I've been styling for Stitch Fix while balancing and growing my illustration career.

I studied marketing and minored in art, with a focus in watercolor. Though I was never encouraged to pursue art professionally, it has been a constant for me. When I moved here, I began painting more by making watercolor avatars for friends on Twitter. That side hustle grew into making couple and family portraits, and more recently, pet portraits! Art is now a consistent part of my work schedule, which I am incredibly grateful for.

You may have seen my work featured on BuzzFeed, Brooklyn Magazine, Tumblr, Amy Poehler's Smart Girls, or featured in tech presentations, like Sarah Groff-Palermo's "Adventures in the vBuffer" at 2017's Strange Loop conference. I do weekly illustrations for my column "A Wednesday Cute" on HelloGiggles! I do sky paintings and cartoon/mini-comic panel style pieces on my own time as well, which you can check out on my Instagram along with a few selfies!

Aside from art, I am a huge fan of true crime podcasts, watching basketball (go Houston), and karaoke. I enjoy makeup (I recently wrote a piece about highlighters for Women's Health online), shopping for vintage clothing, and the color pink. I love New York, but am constantly missing Sonic happy hour and good brisket.

What hardware do you use?

I work from home in my room. I have a tiny little IKEA desk, but you'll usually find me working from the floor (I have recently invested in a velvety floor cushion) or sitting on my bed. I know it's bad! I'm a real troublemaker.

My laptop is a 2010 MacBook Pro that somehow made it to 2016 before I realized that having a spinning hard drive for that long is WILD and I quickly replaced it before disaster could strike. This is where I do my styling work and answer some emails.

Most of my drawing from the past year has been done on a first generation 9.7" iPad Pro + Apple Pencil, but I recently traded that one in for the newer iPad Pro 10.5" since I needed more memory than I had initially planned for.

When I work traditionally, I depend on BIC mechanical pencils, black Micron pens (usually in size 2 or 3), mixed media paper, Copic Ciao and Winsor and Newton brushmarkers. My paints are a mix of Winsor and Newton liquid watercolors, with Turner gouache for metallic and neon accents. Then I've got my plastic palette, a collection of round tip brushes (some cheap, some sable) and a good ol' cup of water 🙂

I'll photograph traditional art with my phone, but these days I am usually working digitally.

And what software?

The biggest surprise here is that I don't have Adobe Creative Suite, I am still learning it! So when I purchased the iPad Pro, it was to encourage my journey into digital art since i'd only worked on paper before. It definitely helped bridge that gap – I use Procreate and love it! I've purchased some amazing brush sets from Ben Lew that I use a lot.

I browse the internet on Chrome, or Safari on my phone, and use the email app Spark to send files to clients. I will often edit art and photos with vsco before posting.

I keep long-form notes, budgeting, and daily/hourly schedule lineups in Simplenote, and smaller lists for shopping or upcoming monthly events in tick.

I also use Philips Hue bulbs for my main lighting – I turn off all my other lamps and keep the light on a dim "relax" setting before bed 🙂

What would be your dream setup?

Ideally, a way bigger room – I feel like most people in Brooklyn would say that. I'd love to have my own apartment with another bedroom to use as an office and studio space, with great natural lighting and room for a larger desk as well as storage for my paints, markers, and paper. With a larger room, I'd also have space for a printer with high-quality color to produce my own prints and easy shipping labels. Finally, I'd love to have a more lightweight MacBook Pro, since this 2010 one is pretty heavy to carry around to coffee shops!

If I could have the creative hustle and community of NYC combined with some sunshine and mountains outside my window, that would be my ultimate dream. I adore mountains. I'll have to keep exploring for a place like that!